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Priceline just killed William Shatner. Literally. In the latest “Priceline Negotiator” ad, Shatner plunges off a bridge on a bus that bursts into a fireball when it hits the canyon floor. The spot (which has been airing since January 23rd) will be shown in the pregame to the Super Bowl. Shatner’s demise seems very final and – at first glance – very foolish.

After all, William Shatner is the guy that brought Priceline to the dance. He’s been their spokesperson for more than fourteen years. Shatner has helped the company grow from dot-foolishness into a real business with a definable, defendable niche. Today, Priceline is a credible competitor to Expedia and Travelocity. In 1998, it didn’t look like the little dotcom was going to fare so well. When Shatner started promoting Priceline, his biggest competition was a sock puppet, after all.

Shatner hasn’t been a freeloader on Priceline’s stratospheric rise, either. I spoke with Brett Keller, CMO of Priceline who touted Shatner’s value:

Mr. Shatner has been very effective for the brand. [We know this because] we track independent brand metrics as well as the metrics when William Shatner is associated.

In other words, when Shatner appears, he builds the brand.

UPDATE: Priceline adds:

In our independent brand studies, consumers are able to correctly attribute our commercials (with william shatner) to the Priceline brand 85-90% of the time. This is more than double the industry attribution standard.

Killing Shatner wasn’t a random, late night decision. The idea came from Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, which is the agency of record for Priceline. Priceline wanted to move from talking about its "Name Your Own Price" service to building awareness of its less-known fixed price service for hotels. Shatner was simply “too big” for the brand is the story we're told. Don’t buy that story.

For one thing, Shatner is not gone yet. Keller insists that Shatner is still at the center of the campaign due to run for the rest of this year. So we might be treated to an incorporeal version of Shatner floating over vacationers this summer. And it is not even certain that Priceline is parting ways with Shatner. Keller swore to Advertising Age and confirmed to me that:

William Shatner is under contract and remains under contract [with Priceline.] How long will it last? To be honest, I can’t even say that right now.

So what’s really going on? I have a theory. When I worked at Coca-Cola, I had the opportunity to ask then-CMO Sergio Zyman whether he had planned the New Coke debacle as conspiracy theorists have long asserted. “We were not that smart and we were also not that dumb,” he insisted. By that he meant that he (and Roberto Goizueta) were not clever enough to have anticipated both the negative reaction to New Coke and the unexpected share gain the original formula would experience when it was reintroduce as Classic Coke. He was also saying that Coca-Cola was not dumb enough to intentionally risk a billion-dollar franchise had they known they’d see such a backlash from consumers on New Coke.

Priceline seems to be playing the same game, but with fewer risks. They’ve gotten a good deal of publicity by sending Shatner off the bridge and they openly admit that they haven’t closed the door to bringing him back. When I asked Keller if this was a publicity stunt along the lines of Mattel breaking up Ken and Barbie for six years, he responded, “We hope that killing off William Shatner is a clever publicity stunt!”

There’s still a risk for Priceline, of course. If the current campaign does well but there’s no “Bring Back William Shatner!” page on Facebook the company may be tempted to move on without him. No pitchman is immortal (even the “Maytag Repairman” Jesse White retired in 1988 after pitching the brand for 21 years), but 80-year-old William Shatner has come close. And surely a brand as clever as Priceline wouldn’t be foolish enough to think that the Negotiator couldn’t just negotiate fixed-price discounts with hotels, could they? Probably not. So despite what your eyes tell you, don’t be too surprised if you see William Shatner again on the small screen, gleefully over-acting for Priceline.